Guilty Plea In Rape Case May Bring A Life Sentence

The State Is Seeking To Have Perry Vanderford Of Eustis Declared A Violent Career Criminal.

March 8, 1997|By Frank Stanfield of The Sentinel Staff

TAVARES — A man charged with raping a 70-year-old Mount Dora woman pleaded guilty despite prosecutors' plans to have him locked up for life.

Perry Vanderford, 40, of Eustis, entered the plea Thursday to burglary of a dwelling with battery, and sexual battery with threat of serious injury in the Sept. 14 attack on a woman at Riley's Mobile Home Park.

Earlier on the same night, a 77-year-old woman was attacked in the same park. She told police she awoke to find a man crawling across her bed. She struck the man with a cane and he hit her back, and then fled.

A little later, at 1 a.m., a 70-year-old woman was attacked.

The woman, who was forced to use a walker after three hip operations, was terrorized for three hours, police said.

Two days later, she picked Vanderford out of a photo lineup from her hospital bed. He was arrested 45 minutes afterward.

Vanderford has a long history of arrests, mostly for attacking elderly women. However, 10 days before being arrested on the rape charge, prosecutors had dropped one sex charge and downgraded another to a misdemeanor after he was arrested on charges that he exposed himself to children at a shopping center.

Vanderford has described himself as ''a man with mental problems'' who has to do ''crazy things to get help.''

One psychiatric expert, after hearing about the crimes, described the incidents in terms of a predator.

''It's like in the jungle: The tiger goes after older prey,'' said Dr. Dev Chacko, director of the psychiatric intensive care unit of Florida Hospital South.

If the State Attorney's office has its way, Vanderford will be classified as a violent career criminal and sentenced to life in prison.